


the (four in the) morning after

by Astrodynamicist



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Drift Hangover, Drift Side Effects, F/M, Fluff, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-13
Updated: 2014-05-13
Packaged: 2018-01-24 14:09:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1607939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astrodynamicist/pseuds/Astrodynamicist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sergio wakes up in the middle of the night, he is immediately, even before he’s opened his eyes, aware of three things:</p><p>1) Caitlin is sitting in a chair next to him.</p><p>2) He’s in the base hospital.</p><p>3) His everything hurts.</p><p>“How do you feel, exactly?” Like he’s been steamrollered. But that is probably not a good response.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the (four in the) morning after

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to my betas IngloriousHeist and TrillianAri!

_**Kodiak Island Base Hospital  
night after prototype dry run** _

When Sergio wakes up in the middle of the night, he is immediately, even before he’s opened his eyes, aware of three things:

1) Caitlin is sitting in a chair next to him, sleeping the uncomfortable sleep of one resolutely keeping vigil at a loved one’s bedside. Her presence is a warm, background constant, a guarding sentinel. A reason for his heart to thump a little harder.

2) He’s in the base hospital. He’d recognize the soft beeping of medical monitors anywhere. (God knows they’d spent enough time prodding at him over the last couple months.) And there’s also the weird hospital smell. He’s not a fan of the weird hospital smell.

3) His everything hurts.

Upon further reflection in subsequent minutes, he realizes he has no idea how he knew without looking that Caitlin was right there. Sure, he’d always been a little hyper-aware of her presence, just like he had with any other crush in his life. But this is different. Well, whatever the cause, the important thing is she’s here. She looks just as uncomfortable as he (somehow) knew she was. Her cheek is smushed against the seatback, her glasses are shoved askew, and her legs are pulled up so that the entire sprawl of her body can fit into the chair’s ill-shaped embrace. He marvels, not for the first time, how small a person she is, that she actually can fit all of herself onto that relatively small platform.

He also notes, while he’s at it, the tangled mess her bun has fallen into, the gob of drool oozing out the side of her mouth, the fact that she apparently never went home to change from her work clothes (which incidentally are entirely rumpled), and the way she snores softly because the way she’s curled her head and neck left them at weird angles. It should be an unattractive tableau, but Sergio finds it endearing. He feels his lips curve into a soft smile.

“Ngh.” Caitlin stirs. Then jerks awake. She blinks owlishly at Sergio from behind her crooked glasses, seeming to take a minute to remember where she is, and why. “You okay?” she finally asks, wiping the drool from the side of her mouth and straightening her glasses.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Her eyes abruptly narrow, and she pins him with the look of intense skepticism she normally reserves for unexpected data outputs and dubiously wired hardware. “How do you feel, exactly?”

“Uh.” Like he’s been steamrollered. But that is probably not a good response. “You know that feeling you get the morning after you’ve pushed yourself too hard at the gym? That achy, leaden feeling? I feel like that.”

“In what muscle groups?”

“...All of them.”

She sighs. “Oh dear. How is your head?”

“I have a pretty nasty headache,” he admits. Caitlin stands, stretches, and starts checking the monitors. “What about you, Doc?”

“Hm? Oh. Fine. I guess I have a bit of a headache, too.” She squints at him. “Or possibly this is sympathy pain. I’m… it’s hard to tell.”

He keeps a vague watch of her as she moves around him, doing… he doesn’t really know. Doctor things. It’s a little hard to track anything, the way he feels.

His nose itches, and he raises a hand to scratch it. _Tries_ to raise a hand to scratch it. It keeps wavering in the air and he can’t seem to hold his arm more than a few inches above the bed. Eventually, he goes for one big _push_ and-

-smacks himself in the face. Great.

He can feel Caitlin looking at him. “This is gonna clear up, right, Doc?” He awkwardly scratches the offending spot on his nose.

She snickers. “I think at this point, all you need is more rest.” She steps closer, takes his stray arm by the wrist and gently places it back by his side. Places her other hand on his forehead, strokes his close-cropped hair and his brow. Her skin is warm, and rough, dried by the frigid Kodiak air and nicked from being forced into narrow spaces to minister to delicate equipment. It feels good. His eyes shutter closed of their own accord.

“That was a hell of a stunt you pulled back there,” he says.

She stills. “Well, the neural load was too high. I figured, if it were shared, it might, you know. Be manageable.”

He looks at her again, gauging her response. “How did you know that would work?”

Her lips twist into a sheepish sort of smile. “...I didn’t. But given the length and quantity of the control relays, and the natural bandwidth capacity of a single human brain-” She launches into a rambling, semi-coherent scientific discussion. Or perhaps it is fully coherent. Sergio is not a neurologist; he really wouldn’t know.

He listens to her chatter for a little while, though he’s too tired and headachy to focus on it much. He’s fading fast; sleep is beginning to overtake him again. So, he says before he can’t,  in a voice so soft it’s nearly inaudible, “Thank you.”

“-increases with the square of- what?”

“Thank you. For saving my life.”

The doctor freezes. “Well, of course. I- I couldn’t let you die…. You’re the best pilot candidate we have! And….” She dithers a bit. “You’re my friend.”

Sergio… he kinda half-smiles at this. “I love you, too.”

Caitlin startles. And sputters. But she doesn’t deny the implicit claim. “...You should rest,” she says eventually, laying a hand on his cheek for a moment before getting up again.

“Please don’t go.”

“Sergio…”

“Just keep me company.”

“I’m with Jasper, I-”

“Then- forget what I said. I just, we both had a hell of a day.” Sergio tries not to think about how much colder and emptier the room will be without her in it. “I don’t like being stuck in hospitals. I just want… you know, a friend.”

She hovers at his bedside. She’s like a bird, not sure if danger looms, tensed to fly away. “I need to sleep, too.”

“So sleep here,” he says. Caitlin shifts her weight, looks around like an answer is hiding somewhere in the sparse furniture or on the white, prefab walls. “Hey, you jumped into my head without a second thought,” he adds before she can bolt. “No one would think any less of you for staying tonight.”

Caitlin stops shifting. And frowns. “That was different.”

“Yeah. This can’t kill you.” The lieutenant grins impishly at her, and she can’t help but grin back.

“I’ll go find another chair so I can stretch out,” she says with a snort.

“That’s not going to be any more comfortable.”

“I’ll manage.” She turns to leave.

“Doc.” When he has her attention, he strains to scoot himself a few inches to one side. Caitlin watches, nonplussed. Once he gets as far as he can manage, he grins up at her invitingly.

“No.”

“I’m not trying to be-!” Caitlin turns on her heel and leaves. “-creepy….” Sergio sighs, disappointment and embarrassment knotting his guts.

He relaxes back into his pillow again and closes his eyes. Sleep flows over him quickly - until a rattle at the door jars him back to full consciousness. Caitlin has returned with a rolly chair.

She quickly positions the two chairs to form something of a bed. The rolly one moves whenever she tries to get comfortable, however. “Why did you-” he starts.

“It was all I could find that no one would miss.” She sits cross-legged in the one from his room, glaring daggers at her errant piece of furniture.

“I know it’s not regulation, Doc, but-”

“No.”

“I don’t think-”

“No.”

“Okay.”

Caitlin tries wedging the rolly chair against the wall so that no matter how her feet move it’ll be corralled. When she climbs into the arrangement, however-

CRASH. “OW!” The chair shoots sideways and she gets dumped to the floor.

Sergio jerks upright, despite his aches and fatigue. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine! I’mfineI’mfineI’mfine.” Caitlin pulls herself to sitting. Glares at the toppled chairs. “...I have a _Ph.D_ from _Carnegie Mellon_.”

He lets himself fall back. “...Well, it wasn’t in chairs, so….”

She snorts. Then dissolves into overtiredness-fueled giggles. Which fade into a sigh. “I need _sleep_ ," she repeats wearily. She scrubs at her face. Looks balefully at Sergio. “Just for tonight.”

“That’s all I’m asking for, Doc.” He tries very hard not to let his glee show on his face. He only mostly succeeds.

The hospital bed is narrow, and by necessity Caitlin has to snuggle close to Sergio. But by the way she relaxes entirely against him almost immediately, he figures she really doesn’t mind.

Exhausted as they are, both fall asleep before too long, and stay curled together that way, smiling contentedly, until the morning nurse wakes them.


End file.
